Do you like critical theory on the evolution of religion into technological priesthoods, filtering reality through the algorithm, subjugating the unskilled labor neighbor, degrading the human self, spreading fake news, ubiquitous surveillance, and why all that's pretty shitty? Oh boy, you do! (Well, I sure do.) Read this fantastic article by Alice Maz, who also does a real good stuff.

Short answer? Money. Long answer: Moooooooneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey. Ignoring my glib hot takes, this is a very fascinating deep dive into the cultural forces at play in Portugal, and the remnant effects of policy change and a country that was completely unprepared for the inflood of drugs after the end of a dictator's regime.

You probably already know the story of how ARPA and DARPA and FARPA (not a thing, that last one) developed the internet in order to rapidly communicate information during a potential threat of nuclear war, but did you know that it was the first time that people actually even conceptualized of computers as anything other than a massive mainframe that did batch processing? The idea of a single person being able to go, sit in front of a computer, and do more than one thing at once or even interact with a computer multiple times per day was a WILD idea. It took an article with a title like "Man-Computer Symbiosis" to get people to really grok it. A great Aeon read--as always.

Man, I love William Wolfgang Wunderbar. They're totally underrated (*editor's note: by who??), in my opinion, producing an absolute mass of work that "becomes both the gallery for, and subject of, the art displayed there. This creates a fascinating and subversive digital-alchemy that begins to reveal the hidden nature of social media itself, as well as our increasingly complicated relationship with it." Yeah, I'm quoting the article, because honestly I don't even know how to do it much more justice. Just read the interview, follow the ... entity... on Facebook, and enjoy.

"In Japan, you can pay an actor to impersonate your relative, spouse, coworker, or any kind of acquaintance." It is entirely weird to me that this is a booming industry. Honestly, the actual interview is weirder than I can even write: "I played a father for a 12-year-old with a single mother. The girl was bullied because she didn’t have a dad, so the mother rented me. I’ve acted as the girl’s father ever since. I am the only real father that she knows. . . . If the client never reveals the truth, I must continue the role indefinitely. If the daughter gets married, I have to act as a father in that wedding, and then I have to be the grandfather. So, I always ask every client, 'Are you prepared to sustain this lie?' It’s the most significant problem our company has." Can you imagine setting a line item in your budget for "Performance Hires" or something like that? And to be an actor, doing it, for... for good? For money? What happens if the money runs out? "Sorry, I've been your father for hire this whole time and I can't do it anymore 'cause I'm not getting paid." What if you actually fall in love? What if... oh my god there are so many questions. I had an entire rant loaded about bioessentialism versus cultural norms but it just got bowled over by how weird this all is. Thanks to Henry for forwarding this one!

Look. I want your DNA. In my DNA. In ink in my DNA. I'm gonna put it in there. With your consent, of course. No, it's not weird. It's cool. --- Actually, imagine a world where this is normal? If we just commemorated our closest lovers, family, and friends into our bodies that way? It's kind of like the only type of sex you can call platonic, in that there's technically an exchange of DNA (if y'all both do it). Boy, I'm sure not going to extend this metaphor any further. But seriously, I have misgivings about tattoos and my own inconsistent nature. Will I really love what I love now in twenty years? (That's neither here nor there. I'm just thinking out loud.)

Way's Notes

Hi there!

Firstly, let's talk about Patreon. (Sorry non-Patreon people. Look for "Second" if you don't care--but there's some musings on how shitty of a move this is which may or may not be interesting to you.) Ugh, right? Basically, Patreon's new model is designed to offset fees to you so that I get more money. Yay, me! I mean, you know, except that it screws you, especially if you only give me a buck or two (which most of my patrons do), as it increases the percentage that you pay by like 20-30%, which is simply too much for you to pay as essentially thank-you-for-existing-appreciation-money. So here's the short and skinny of it: if you want to cancel or reduce your support through Patreon, no hard feelings. I'm lucky in that the income I get from Patreon is supplemental and provides funds for servers and the cost to maintain a couple-thousand-person email list (all told, roughly $40/mo)--it's not my livelihood we're talking about. So that's good.

First(b). I also realize that I haven't been great about posting to the Weird Feed, and this is a nice kick in the ass (as well as my whole life currently) to actually start producing additional written content for you. So I'll be getting my act together there.

In addition, I'm going to explore other funding platforms, and potentially do the work of setting up multiple payment platforms for you to use (with an easy-to-understand page on which I recommend based on how you want to give). I'll write scripts to export my supporters to a list based on support amounts and email them the cool stuff directly--we don't need no stinking Patreon. It'll take me a bit to get all this together, but once I do, I'll let you know down here. And that brings me to...

First(c). It's amazing how quickly Patreon managed to completely blow up all goodwill they had. Now we see them: just another company that's caught in the hopeless VC firespiral that doesn't actually care about the little guys (long tail? what's that?). It only takes another competitor who's willing to come along and take a little bit less money (and maybe even a little bit less VC funding) and completely take over, and here's the thing: for a while, I was researching how to make a Patreon competitor that emphasized money for individual content, embedded on individual pages (aka the platform is as invisible as possible). What Patreon does, can, in MVP form, essentially be boiled down to 3 engineers and a team of accountants and lawyers. Or maybe one engineer and a really good finance lawyer. (I'm Dunning-Krugering. But I dream. And I dream.) So here's hoping that something new, better, and Finally Good comes along. Hell, maybe even an abstraction layer on top of all these services that lets you pay how you want. But whatever.

Secondly (yes we're past the Patreon stuff), I wrote a blog post! Lately I've been talking a lot about the insufficiency of scientific progress to keep up with information overload, as well as the completely biased and invested forces between a lot of it. So I wrote about How I Got Weird. I hope you enjoy it. It's a full blog post, so that you don't have to look at my dumb writing in this tiny little email here. Also, yes, that has a separate mailing list, too. I run too many mailing lists. I can stop whenever I want!

I hope you've been having a great day otherwise, because boy oh boy I've had a pretty good day and I am exhausted and I'm going to sleep, but not before telling you that I'm trying to learn to lucid dream! I want to contact my subconscious (or whatever part of me I personify as my subconscious). I want advice, to me, from me, and also to jump and fly and have sex with random dream people. But it's interesting to think about the techniques you have to use, which essentially boil down to constantly asking yourself "Is this a dream?" and then trying to put your hand through stuff, which you should be able to do in a dream. Or look at your hands and notice that they're all... hand-y. I'm thinking about getting a imdeepandthisis14 tattoo that says "Is this the dream?" Like, is this the dream? Or is that the dream? That's deep, man.

Actually, it really is kind of deep. I'm making fun of it because it's too deep. This sort of contemplation makes you crazy. OK. I have to go to sleep. I love you.
Comments, rants, rambles, and hellos directly to [email protected].

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